What’s Age-related macular degeneration?
It’s one of the reasons of becoming blind among elderly people, and caused by the change of the macular with aging. Its type is divided to “atrophic” or “exudative” if there is the neovascularization or not.
Because the symptom tends to be seen with the elderly, it is thought that the reason is aging, however, not all about the disease has revealed yet, so there have been plenty of researches at this moment.
Main subjective symptoms
·Distorted vision
·Lack of the central vision
·Deterioration of the eyesight
How to examine
Funduscopy
Dilating your pupils, the doctor observes deep inside of your eye. Once the eyedrop is put, the effect lasts about half of a day. There will be some side effect that you have difficulty of focusing on short distance, and may feel too much brightness of the light. Therefore please refrain from driving car/bicycle after the examination.
Fluorescein fundus angiography
With this examination, fluorescent is sent and in your blood vessel and shows the condition of your blood flow so that the fundus can be observed in detail.
Amsler chart
Using a chart with grid pattern, this examination would roughly check the lack of the visual field.
Optical Coherence Tomography
This is an inspection machine using near infrared ray, which can observe the cross section of the retina. It can diagnose some diseases of retina, especially around macular precisely and immediately.
Treatment
How to prevent the disease
Wear sunglasses;
To prevent your eye from soaking in the visible ray directly. (E.g.: When you play golf)
Refrain from smoking;
To suppress the shrink of the blood vessel and improve the bloodstream.
Don’t eat or drink too much and do some sports properly;
To prevent from being the hypertension.
Take good sleep;
To rest and recover your eye.
Have the meals with good nutritional balance;
To remove reactive oxygen, eat some foods which contains vitamin C/E and β-carotene. (e.g.: vegetables fruits, beans, nuts, sunflower oil and so on)
Consume zinc;
It is contained in seafood and oyster.
